I've had nightmares in my time, but I've never dreamed of anything like this.
Since the year is swiftly drawing to a close -- and this will be my last weekend in Indiana until 2011 -- I'm doing some housecleaning that will result in a few mismatched double features. Case in point: tonight's pairing of the TCM Underground feature Dementia from 1955 with 1957's 20 Million Miles to Earth. Curiously, the first one was shown under its alternate title Daughter of Horror, which is spoken by narrator Ed McMahon several times during the course of the film. I guess someone was worried we were going to forget it.
Aside from McMahon's narration (which asks pointed questions like "Do you know what madness is or how it strikes?" and makes reference to "the pulsing, throbbing world of the insane mind") there is no spoken dialogue in Dementia, which saved writer/producer/director John Parker the trouble of having to write any. Instead, the film follows an unnamed young woman (Adrienne Barrett) through a typical night in the life, which includes allowing herself to be pimped out to a big shot (associate producer Bruno VeSota, who's never looked more suave) and then, after being shown the town and forced to watch him eat an entire chicken (which Parker frequently shows in extreme close-up), stabbing him in the gut and pushing him off a balcony. No wonder when she buys a newspaper (from Angelo Rossitto, a dwarf actor whose career stretched from the silent era to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) with the headline "MYSTERIOUS STABBING" it continues to dog her even after she throws it away.
The film runs a few minutes shy of an hour, which is about right for a mostly plotless parade of bizarre scenes and characters. The strangest by far, though, has to be the flashback to Barrett's childhood that's introduced by a faceless figure she encounters in an imaginary graveyard. Instead of cutting away, Parker simply inserts her father and mother (Ben Roseman and Lucille Rowland) into the graveyard setting so they can reenact the trauma that causes Barrett to go around killing people like VeSota. Of course, even in her own deranged mind she can't allow herself get away with that, which is why Roseman reappears as a plainclothes policeman on her trail. Guess she still feels guilty after all these years.
There's no guilt involved when it comes to enjoying 20 Million Years to Earth, which Ray Harryhausen made right after Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. Directed by Nathan Juran (who also made Hellcats of the Navy, The Deadly Mantis and The Brain from Planet Arous the same year, so he must have been busy), 20 Million Years is about a reptilian creature called the Ymir which is brought back from Venus and grows at an alarming rate in Earth's atmosphere, causing much destruction and loss of life before it is finally stopped. There are also a number of human beings in the film (top-billed love interests William Hopper and Joan Taylor chief among them), but none of them inspire our sympathy the way the Ymir does. During the climactic showdown in the Roman Colosseum when it roars it seems to be crying, "I didn't ask to come here! I didn't ask to be this size! Stop shooting me!" Alas, that doesn't seem to be an option.